From the Revd Paul Nicolson
Sir, - As a member of the CHARM scheme, I do not pay rent to the
Church of England Pensions Board, as stated in your report (News,
1 August). I pay a licence fee of £523 a month, or 25 per cent
of my gross income. The Board paid £95,000 in 1999 for this
two-bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and one-living-room terraced house.
If I died tomorrow, the Board would be able to sell it for around
£400,000. I have given two homeless people a temporary bed in my
spare room for several months. I retired to London to continue
working and campaigning with and for the poorest residents.
The capitalist Church of England now wants to increase the
licence fee. It is not satisfied that it is taking £87,864, over 14
years at today's prices, out of my gross pension of £27,000 a year.
That is for a new property, which has needed very little repair,
and will make £300,000 profit when I die.
I had thought that, true to our faith, the Church of England had
a housing policy to fit the low incomes of retired clergy which
shone as a beacon of justice to national governments amid the chaos
and injustice of the national housing market. But it has chosen to
swim with the extreme capitalist crowd of international and
national speculators, landlords, and property-owners and -vendors,
and to withdraw from a gospel-related housing policy that links
rents to income and puts all the human needs of the poorest
residents first.
PAUL NICOLSON
Taxpayers Against Poverty
93 Campbell Road, London N17 0BF